If you are a hedge fund manager betting on rising and falling stocks, the first quarter of this year was the best for your strategy since before the dot-com bubble burst in 2000.

By the same measure, the final three months of last year were likely your worst on record and even more painful than any quarter during the 2008 financial crisis, according to Absolute Return indices.

That reversal in fortune has provided some relief to billionaire fund managers and their investors this year. The median U.S. equity fund in the Absolute Return database returned 8% through March, while the median fund concentrating on technology stocks returned more than 11%. Those figures compared to gains of 13.5% in the S&P 500 Index.

All hedge fund strategies contributed positive returns through March, and the Absolute Return Composite Index rose 3.1%. U.S. Treasury bonds returned about 2%, by comparison.

Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management led large hedge funds in the first quarter, gaining 36.9% in its public investment strategy. Glenview Capital Management and Tiger Global Management also outperformed the benchmark U.S. stock index through March. Even David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital, which fell more than 34% last year, told investors it had returned 11% this year.

Multistrategy hedge funds investing in a range of asset classes gained 2.9% in the first quarter, according to Absolute Return indices, rebounding from three straight months of losses at the end of last year. Och-Ziff Capital Management’s flagship strategy notched some of the largest gains, returning more than 7.9% through March.

Citadel, which employs teams of portfolio managers, rose more than 6.3% in its flagship Wellington fund. Its close competitor Millennium Management returned about 1.7%, while Balyasny Asset Management’s flagship fund gained 4.2%.

Macroeconomic funds produced mixed results, losing money in both February and March after returning more than 1.6% in January, according to Absolute Return indices. The largest macro fund, Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha, fell 5.9% in the first quarter after gaining 14.6% last year. Element Capital Management returned 5.2%, continuing its 15-year streak of positive performance.

Hedge funds investing in credit and high yield bonds gained almost 2.7% during the quarter. Canyon’s Value Realization Fund led some of its largest peers, returning about 6.4% through March.

Lowering exposures

Some portion of the double-digit gains in equity hedge funds could be explained by broader appreciation in the U.S. stock market, which responded positively to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s decision to pause interest rate hikes in late January.

“The dovish shift in Fed policy…has primarily driven the rally,” Dan Loeb’s Third Point wrote to investors this month. “With this shift now arguably reflected in asset prices, further equity uplift likely will come from improving global growth or re-positioning.”

Stock pickers have largely retreated from domestic stocks during their surge. Credit Suisse said hedge funds followed its prime brokerage unit reduced their exposure to U.S. equities relative to global equities through mid-April this year, according to the bank’s data.

There are also signs hedge funds have begun shying from the fast-growing technology companies they favored in recent years. Both human stock pickers and quantitative funds in recent weeks sold so-called growth stocks in favor of undervalued companies, reversing their early-year stances, according to Morgan Stanley prime brokerage data.

“The flows have not been large enough…yet to cause a major shift in net exposure, but may suggest that [hedge funds] are wary of pushing this trend further, given the large outperformance of Growth over Value already this year,” Morgan Stanley wrote.

Q1 Performance: Greenlight, Tiger Global rise with markets on Absolute Return.